Seagate Technology’s stock surges toward a record after double upgrade at BofA

Shares of Seagate Technology PLC
STX,
+1.64%
jumped 2.1% toward a record high in midday trading Thursday, to buck the selloff in its technology peers and the broader stock market, after BofA Securities analyst Wamsi Mohan swung to bullish from bearish on the data storage company, citing the nearing of an "inflection" in revenue trajectory and industry profitability. Mohan raised his rating to buy from underperform, while lifting his stock price target to $90 from $54. He said he expects capacity additions to moderate, pricing to normalize and mass capacity hard-disk drives (HDD) to drive improvement in revenue, mix and margins. Among other reasons for his about-face on Seagate, he expects a transition to becoming a pure-play cloud story, with continued strong demand from cloud-service providers. "Years of preemptively adding capacity in anticipation of demand depressed HDD prices as [Seagate] and [Western Digital Corp.] competed for market share," Mohan wrote in a note to clients. "At its upcoming analyst day, we expect [Seagate] to communicate a more disciplined approach to CapEx given recognition that the industry historically has grappled with excess capacity." Seagate's stock gains come as the SPDR Technology Select Sector ETF
XLK,
-0.75%
slid 1.2% and the S&P 500
SPX,
-0.39%
shed 0.8%.

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